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On View

Date:

late 1903–early 1904

Artist:

Pablo PicassoSpanish, active France, 1881–1973

About this artwork

Pablo Picasso produced The Old Guitarist, one of his most haunting images, while working in Barcelona. In the paintings of his Blue Period (1901–4), of which this is a prime example, Picasso restricted himself to a cold, monochromatic blue palette; ﬂattened forms; and the emotional, psychological themes of human misery and alienation, which are related to the Symbolist movement and the work of such artists as Edvard Munch. Picasso presented The Old Guitarist as a timeless expression of human suffering. The bent and sightless man holds his large, round guitar close to him; its brown body is the painting’s only shift in color. The elongated, angular figure of the blind musician relates to the artist’s interest in the history of Spanish art and, in particular, the great sixteenth-century artist El Greco. Most personally, however, the image reﬂects the struggling twenty-two-year-old Picasso’s sympathy for the plight of the downtrodden; he knew what it was like to be poor, having been nearly penniless during all of 1902. His works from this time depict the miseries of the destitute, the ill, and the outcasts of society.

Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of a Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture Lent from American Collections, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 1933), p. 56, cat. 402, as The Guitarist, 1903.

Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of a Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 1934), p. 53, cat. 358, as The Guitarist, 1903.

Richard R. Brettell, “The Bartletts and the Grande Jatte: Collecting Modern Painting in the 1920s,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 12, 2 (1986), pp. 105, 111, as Old Guitarist and The Old Guitarist.

Richard J. Wattenmaker and Anne Distel, Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), pp. 192; 304, n. 7, as The Old Guitar Player.

Andrew Wilton, “Symbolism in Britain,” in The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Watts: Symbolism in Britain, 1860–1910, exh. cat. eds. Andrew Wilton and Robert Upstone (Flammarion, 1997), p. 33, fig. 17, as The Old Guitarist, 1903.

Michael FitzGerald, “Chapter Two (1914–1929),” in Picasso and American Art, exh. cat. (Whitney Museum of American Art/Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 69; 70, fig. 25; 104, as The Old Guitarist, 1903.

Ambroise Vollard (1867–1939), Paris, probably acquired directly from the artist ca. 1906 [Miller 2006, p. 388]; sold through Carroll Galleries, New York, to John Quinn (1870–1924), New York, 1915 for 5,000 fr [$1,000] [letter from John Quinn to Ambroise Vollard dated Feb. 26, 1915 in curatorial object file; Memorandum of Pictures consigned to Carroll Galleries, Inc, (n.d.), p. 3, John Quinn Collection, New York Public Library Manuscript Division, copy in curatorial object file. According to the Memorandum, the gallery also received a $400 commission, putting the total cost of the painting at $1,400.]; Quinn estate; sold through Felix Wildenstein, New York, to Paul Rosenberg (1881–1959), Paris, at Art Centre auction, New York, Jan. 9, 1926 [“52 Picasso Paintings Sold,” New York Times (Jan. 10, 1926), p. E11, copy in curatorial object file]; sold through Joseph Stransky, The French Galleries, Inc., New York, to Frederic Clay Bartlett (1873–1953), Chicago, 1926, for $9,500 [letter from Alexandre Rosenberg to Courtney G. Donnell dated Nov. 17, 1975 in curatorial object file; letter from Frederic Clay Bartlett to Joseph Stransky dated May 21, 1927 in curatorial object file]; given to the Art Institute, April 30, 1926 [Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Trustees, Apr. 30, 1926].